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About Simon

Hi. I'm Simon Rubinstein-Salzedo. I'm a mathematics postdoc at Dartmouth College. I'm also a musician; I play piano and cello, and I also sometimes compose music and study musicology. I also like to play chess and write calligraphy. This blog is a catalogue of some of my thoughts. I write them down so that I understand them better. But sometimes other people find them interesting as well, so I happily share them with my small corner of the world.

To find a polynomial f(x) with integral coefficients such that f(2^(1/2) + 2^(1/3)) = 0.
I have solved it but with tremendous effort and what seems to be a rather specific method. Is there a technique? Is there something here I don’t understand?

x^6-6x^4-4x^3+12x^2-24x-4. What I did was to construct a polynomial with roots the sum of the roots of two other polynomials with Viète’s formula. I got x^6-6x^4-4x^3+36x^2+48x-4 because I made some arithmetic errors. then tried it and didn’t make arithmetic errors and got the above (correct) answer.